iPhone: Global panacea or $600 widget?

If you are in line waiting for the launch of the Apple/AT&T iPhone on Friday, consider yourself a loser.

The same holds true for you guys already in line for the Transformers movie, or you kids in line for the next Harry Potter book. But since the iPhone’s arrival from heaven is the next red-letter day in the Overly-Dramatic Universe, let’s focus on that.

Since it was announced earlier this year, pre-sales euphoria for the iPod/Phone device has reached the level of hysteria normally reserved for Super Bowl week, a Beatles reunion, or a Paris Hilton obituary.

The iPhone won’t stop global warming. It won’t bring peace to the Middle East. But if it lives up to even a portion of the hype, it does have the potential to change how people interact with their cell phones, computers and each other.

New Coke, Segway, iPhone

Yes, the writer is taking a tongue-in-cheek approach, but let’s analyze that. The fact that Ellen Lee has to tell us the iPhone won’t solve worldwide problems is a clue that some people are acting like it could. And the fact that Lee thinks it will change people’s lives is also illustrative.

By “illustrative,” I mean “stupid.”

It won’t change anyone’s lives. Teenagers will still text each other with gibberish acronyms. People will still talk loudly in restaurants and theaters to their phones. Everyone will hate their cell phone carrier. And no one will feel the need to squint at their phone and surf the Internet for more than a few minutes when they can use a big screen to do it at home, school or work.

Remember the Segway (Link)? That was the two-wheeled motorized device that was supposed to revolutionize life in American cities. According to Dean Kamen, who invented it, urban planners would have to redesign cities because of the impact of his device.

How’s that pedestrian revolution working out, Dean? I’ll tell you how it’s going — some cops have them, and some postal workers have them, and there’s a guy who runs a downtown tour with them. That’s it.

You have two days to learn QuarkXpress

If you work at a business that employs graphics design people, expect them to call in sick today or tomorrow. Over the weekend, coffeehouses and upscale bars will resemble clearings in the woods, with iPhone users battling like rutting bucks to show their gadget superiority.

On Monday, the Newly Cool will show up bruised and scarred at work and spend the morning huddled in bunches. They will be using their finger to scroll through CD covers on the iPhone’s screen; from a distance, it will appear as though they are flicking June bugs away from the screen. They will call each other — desk to desk, cubicle to cubicle — on their new “device.” They will get Google Maps directions to their own homes and do this several times.

Don’t worry. It won’t last long. If I know Apple, the device’s battery will crap out before lunch.

It’s a phone, and an expensive one at that. Nearly anything it does can already be accomplished on other phones. But that hasn’t stopped the JobsNation from camping out. The line actually began a day or two ago. (Link ) (Link )

The meat of the issue is in the beginning of the second link:

For Jessica Rodriguez, waiting four days for an iPhone is nothing when the prize is “the next big thing.”

On Tuesday, Rodriguez became the fourth person to line up outside Apple Inc.’s Fifth Avenue store in New York. The 24-year-old college student wants to get a belated birthday gift for her sister as soon as the iPhone starts selling Friday evening.

“Words can’t express why I want an iPhone,” Rodriguez said, sitting in a red folding chair she brought. “The main reason is (Apple CEO) Steve Jobs is a genius. He’s a great innovator. It’s going to be the next big thing in cell phones.”

For those who can’t camp out on line, i.e. have lives, there is quite a cottage industry hiring line-sitters on Craig’s List. (Link )

See? The iPhone is already changing lives (of the homeless) and changing the way we interact (by making us spend money to hold a place in a line with people we don’t want to be around).

The iPhone: Great waffles and ribbed for her pleasure

Conan O’Brien recognized the idiocy of iPhone fever, too:

If you’re smart, you’ll avoid Apple and AT&T stores Friday. I, on the other hand, have a nose for news … and trouble. I’ll see you there.